Gathered here are five recordings that I have previously shared with my Facebook fans and Twitter followers. These recordings are not my finest; visit my DJ profile for a full listing of my best studio mixes and live recordings.

Some recordings turn out and some do not. A lot of this has to do with my approach to DJing (which relies on a certain amount of crowd engagement to really shine). I treat the set as a journey, not just a showcase of hot crowd-rocking tunes in whatever order. Moreover, the journey is entirely improvised; I haven’t planned a set in years. I step up to the decks (now a laptop and controller) and select an introduction with as little as 10 seconds to go. From that point onward anything can happen. My role is that of navigator; I chart a course through exotic dimensions of sound, but I don’t travel alone. I rely heavily on my intuition, reading the crowd for signs of where we should be going. In this sense, my sets are a “co-creation”, the result of a dynamic linkage between dance floor and DJ booth.

As great as that might sound, such an approach doesn’t always work, particularly when there isn’t a lot of energy in the space. This is often the case at small, poorly attended events where the dance floor never reaches critical mass, or during unpopular time slots, before the dance floor really starts to take off (or, rarely, long after it winds down). A few of the recordings in this post were taken under such conditions.

The other issue with live recordings is technical precision. Every DJ that takes risks will botch a mix now and then, particularly in small clubs with poor monitoring. It’s not so bad in the moment but such flaws can be magnified by repeat listening. I’ve also had some problems with pops, clicks, and gaps in the audio signal, some of which I have gotten to the bottom of, others which remain mysterious. Even if I record a great set I tend not to share it widely if there are any obvious blemishes.

Anyhow, the point of writing all of this is to explain why I haven’t released these sets before, and why I won’t be giving them a “wide release” (like the mixes on my profile). I’ve also treated this as an opportunity to share a broad outline of my philosophy of DJing, ideally so that you enjoy the listening experience a little more (and perhaps forgive the flaws that you may notice).

Alright, let’s get started…

Destination 2012

This was my “farewell set” recorded live at the Shakti Collective’s NYE event in nearly two weeks ago. I wanted to round out a decade of DJing in Toronto with a retrospective set filled with classics, particularly those classics that were regular fixtures of my sets back in the day. I also looked upon it as an opportunity to play a few old tunes that I always meant to drop at some point or another but never got around to (Neuro, for instance, which is one of the songs that got me into trance in the first place). I know, the programming in this set is a bit weird. Perhaps it was the hour (I started shortly after 5 in the morning and the party had emptied out a lot) but there simply wasn’t a lot of energy to work with. This should explain some of the awkward twists and turns; it’s a tough crowd when old workhorses like these hardly elicit more than a nod and a smile! Still, I had a great time, and the technical side is relatively solid, so here it is…

Double Dragon – Soft Machine [Phantasm Records] (2000)
Psychopod – Re-Vision [TIP Records] (1997)
Space Cat & Absolum – Beam Me Up [YoYo Records] (1998)
X-Dream – Brain Forest [Blue Room Released] (1997)
Astral Projection – Life On Mars [Phonokol Records/Trust In Trance Records] (1997)
Domestic – Amateur Gynecologist [Phonokol Records/Trust In Trance Records] (1998)
Infected Mushroom – Nothing Comes Easy [BNE Records] (2000)
Pigs In Space – Visitors (Part 1) [Phonokol Records] (1998)
Cosma – Nonstop [HOM-Mega Productions] (2003)
Quietman – The Sleeper (Man With No Name Remix) [Platipus Records] (1998)
X-Cabs – Neuro [Bellboy Records] (1995)
Beast – Trouble [Twisted Music] (1998)
Atmos – The Only Process [Acid Casualties] (1999)
S>Range – Test Tones (Chromosome Remix) [Turbo Trance Records] (2004)
Tranan – Cluedo [TIP World] (2001)
Vibrasphere – Elephant [Plusquam Records] (2003)
The Overlords – God’s Eye On Goa (Ticon Remix) [Hadshot Haheizar] (2003)
Human Blue – Pocket Radio [MIDIJUM Records] (2003)
Purple & Lunar – Subtle Thrust [Transient Records] (2000)

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WNW December 7th, 2011

I played this one at the local biweekly psytrance night, Why Not Wednesdays? At the time I figured this might be the last time I play out in Toronto (whoops, see above), so this was also a sort of retrospective set, though on a much darker tip. I really like the beginning but it gets choppy near the end, particularly when mixing Where Are You? Part of this is the challenge of mixing old school Goa trance–with its varying tempos, unpredictable structure, and indistinct kick drums–but the sound system setup at WNW (no monitors) is not particularly conducive to technical mixing to begin with. You’ll hear similar gaffes in my other WNW sets for the same reason.

E-Rection – Out Here We Are Stoned (X-Dream Remix) [TIP Records] (1998)
Dark Soho – Uine Saracomm [YoYo Records] (2000)
MFG – Brainwaves [Phonokol Records] (2001)
Tarsis – Millennium [Sub Terranean] (2000)
S>Range – Serial Overtypes [Spiral Trax] (2000)
Infected Deedrah – My Mummy Said [Balloonia Ltd.] (1999)
The Groupie Syndrome – Pacemaker [Aurinko Records] (1998)
Bubble Dragon – Hentai [Flow Records] (2003)
Spirallianz – The Fuser [Spirit Zone Recordings] (2003)
Wizzy Noise – Painful Memory [Candyflip Records] (2002)
Psychoid – In Search Of… [Unreleased] (2001?)
Cosmosis – Doors Of Perception [Transient Records] (1999)
Hux Flux – Errorhead [Spiral Trax] (2000)
Quirk – Ping (Inventive Steps Mix) [Krembo Records] (1998)
The Deviant – Where Are You? [TIP Records] (1997)
Juno Reactor – Feel The Universe (Koxbox Remix) [Blue Room Released] (1996)
Eternal Basement – Taking Place In You (Remix) [Blue Room Released] (2000)

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Harvest 2011

Never have I been so cold as I was at Harvest this year. I really wasn’t prepared for frost and subzero temperatures nor was my laptop. After I booted up I couldn’t enter my password to log in; the keys were jammed. Panic! Eventually the system warmed up enough and I was able to gain access with about five frantic minutes remaining. My time slot was sandwiched in between techno and full-on so I began with a few dubby Zenonesque warblers. Now, did I mention that it was insanely cold? It soon became apparent that people wanted to move–and nuanced slow-burners weren’t going to cut it. Out came the silly dubstep breakdowns, booming techtrance beats, and crowd-pleasing full-on build-ups. The mixing is a bit rough around the edges at times (brr, frozen fingers don’t turn knobs well), but it worked out wonderfully considering that I nearly collapsed into hypothermia the night before. I might have properly released this were it not for some annoying gaps and other artifacts that can be heard now and then.

Grouch & Mr Squatch – Lost In The Forest [Soundkraft Records]
Product Placement – Solitude [Soundkraft Records]
Brujo’s Bowl – The Real Picture [Zenon Records]
Juno Reactor – Navras (Jayant Remix) [Metropolis]
M.E.E.O. – Wilder Beast [Mental Sauce]
Excizen – Renesans 63 [Ektoplazm]
Basic – Prima Vera [HOM-Mega Productions]
Loud – Subinya (Ace Ventura Remix)
6th Floor – Magick [Cosm Records]
Amygdala – Wintermute [Ektoplazm]
Electric Sheep – Machine [Cosm Records]
Cosma – People On Hold (Numb Remix) [Noga Records]
Electric Universe – Meteor (Slackjoint Remix) [Amplidudes Records]
Infected Mushroom – 9 [HOM-Mega Productions]
Phibian & Anti Spin – Dangerstrips [Trick Music]
Artifakt – Ulfednar [Timecode Records]
Principles Of Flight & Talpa – Queen Of The Dead [Timecode Records]

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WNW August 17th, 2011

Another random Wednesday, another classic set. Tribal techtrance to begin with, ending with some crowd-pleasing classics. There are a few rough spots in terms of mixing–sorry about that. One thing to understand about all these WNW recordings is my attitude toward the event: it’s a small, cozy, friendly mid-week get-together. I treat it as an opportunity to fool around, play fun oldies, experiment with new ideas, and have a good time.

Ticon – We Are The Mammoth Hunters (BLT Remix) [HOM-Mega Productions] (2002)
Tetraktys – Forge [Sub Machine Records] (2003)
X-Dream – Rewind [d.Drum] (2002)
Wizzy Noise – Radical Payne [Candyflip Records] (2003)
Kiwa – Kiva Runner [Surreal Audio] (2002)
Juno Reactor – Mona Lisa Overdrive (Thomas P. Heckmann Remix) [Solstice Music International] (2006)
Juno Reactor – Nitrogen (Part 2) [Blue Room Released] (1998)
Bus – North By Northwest (Top Deck Mix) [TIP World] (1999)
Charasmatix – Equilibrism (Part 2) [Hadshot Haheizar] (2000)
Spirallianz – BP Talk [Jester Records] (2006)
Saiko-Pod & Logic Bomb – Magnetic Force [Solstice Music International] (2002)
Orion – Twisted Orbit [TIP World] (2002)
Logic Bomb – Always Choose Retry [TIP World] (2001)
BLT & Danny Makov – The Calling (Live Edit) [Tokyo Dance] (2004)
Prometheus – OK Computer [Twisted Music] (2004)
S>Range – Boom [Acid Casualties] (2000)
Cosma – People On Hold [HOM-Mega Productions] (2003)

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WNW December 22nd, 2010

How’s this for variety? Progressive, techtrance, full-on, darkpsy, twilight, and new school Goa in one relatively cohesive journey. I love when I have a long enough time slot to really sprawl and get creative. On this particular occasion I played from opening to close and had a blast doing so. I would have played more darkpsy and forest but it never sounds right in that space. Toronto doesn’t seem to have much of a taste for it either; this has been more of a progressive and full-on town.

Onionbrain – Spice Travel [Uroboros Records]
Opsy – Majestic [Horns And Hoofs Entertainment]
Excizen – Renesans 63 [Ektoplazm]
Talpa – Melem [BMSS Records]
Basic – Prima Vera [HOM-Mega Productions]
Cosmosis – The Eternal Now [Holophonic Records]
Electric Tease – TV Is The New God (Sub6 Remix) [HOM-Mega Productions]
Laughing Buddha – Reefer Part 2 [Nano Records]
Scorb – Mutoid (Wizack Twizack Remix) [AntiShanti Records]
Joti Sidhu – Point [Neurobiotic Records]
Neural Rectifier Syndrome – Initiate [Last Possible Solution]
Dissociactive – Time Stretch [Sun Station Records]
Transdriver – Reduktor [Impulse Audio Records]
Hux Flux – Bring Your Own Bios (Wizack Twizack Remix) [AntiShanti Records]
Megalopsy – Alien Stretcher [Dark Prisma Records]
Cybernetika – Transmitter [Ektoplazm]
Poizon – Disco [Timecode Records]
Principles Of Flight – Edward To The Rescue [Timecode Records]
Wizack Twizack – Let’s Go Crazy [MMH Records]
Shift – Dirty Signal [Nexus Media]
Artifakt – Tsinat [Timecode Records]
Terrafractyl – Altered Planet [Regen Records]
Sonic Elysium – Clepsydra [Blitz Studio/Sun Station Records]
Artha – Controlled [Cronomi Records]

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If you enjoy these recordings be sure to check out Re:Generate (2011), Eclipse (2009), Darkrave vs Panic (2009), Dreamcatcher (2008), Dark Matter 2 (2007), and Harvest (2006). Thanks for listening!

Original photo by Craig Symonds @ WNW.

©2012 Ektoplazm; click here to view the original post or read what others are saying about it (6 comments so far).

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With the winter chill setting in I am happy to present another round of hot new tunes available from Ektoplazm. This has been a great month for free music, and I’m excited to share with you just a few of the gems that have crossed my stereo in the last little while. Each and every song listed below can be downloaded for free in CD quality direct from Ektoplazm; just click the track title to be taken to the original release drop page. You are welcome to preview these songs with the streaming audio player below; simply click the arrows to skip ahead or go back (Flash required):

Radioactive.Cake – Bending Rodriguez [Glitchy.Tonic.Records]
Moody grooves and groovy moods; Zenonesque progressive psytrance at its best.

Onionbrain – Lunatic [Uroboros Records]
Dark and ominous progressive psytrance vibes from Brazil with some fun samples about UFOs.

Hanuman – Requesting Energies [Neurotrance Records]
Massive darkpsy tune from Chile loaded with powerful beats, heavy bass lines, and super trippy atmospheres. Now this is killer night music! It might be a bit brash for some listeners but I quite like it.

The 1134 – Ghost Train
High-quality twilight-style full-on from California. This song faithfully captures what was great about South African psytrance before the style slid off into endless stop-and-start territory.

Talpa – Unusual Chair [Pyrethrum Records]
Fantastic full-on psytrance with a breathtaking degree of creativity on display. Simply amazing!

Kadasarva – Cybermind [Sun Station Records]
It was almost impossible to pick a favourite from Kadasarva’s outstanding album Steamagination. The level of detail and obvious care put into the composition of this retro-flavoured psytrance is very impressive.

Amygdala – Wintermute [Ektoplazm]
Alright, I’ll admit that I am rather biased here (this selection is from my latest compilation, Spectral Circuitry). This track reminds me a lot of classic Transwave and Koxbox without sounding derivative. The way it opens up at the very end is simply magical; this is what I love about Goa trance. Try it and you’ll see!

Prog-A-Lot – Heart Connection
Aaron Peacock’s new side project harkens back to a more innocent time in electronic music history while remaining true to his distinct style of trance production. Lovely tune.

Globular – Nahajai
Euphoric psychedelic dub with lovely Indian vocals, shimmering melodies, and intricate bass lines. This is just a taste of Globular’s forthcoming debut album :)

Maharishi – Call Of The Ancients [OUIM.net/Space Baby Records]
An awe-inspiring piece of exotic tribal breaks filled with luscious psychedelic atmospheres and magical vocals. Just “wow”!

Interested in hearing more recommendations from the top? Check out previous free music charts from November, October, August, July, June, the spring and winter of 2011, and the fall and summer of 2010.

Photo: Kipling Power.

©2012 Ektoplazm; click here to view the original post or read what others are saying about it (8 comments so far).

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With a hint of winter chill in the air I am happy to present another round-up of some of the finest tracks posted on Ektoplazm this month. Each and every song listed below can be downloaded for free in CD quality direct from Ektoplazm; just click the track title to be taken to the original release drop page. You are welcome to preview these songs with the streaming audio player below; simply click the arrows to skip ahead or go back (Flash required):

Onionbrain – Desert Song [Selknam Records]
Deeply mysterious progressive psytrance from a top-notch compilation.

Faxi Nadu – The Deep [Postunder Records]
Distinctly original psytrance with a highly experimental touch. The entire album is full of surprises but this track is particularly delicious.

Vertical – Plastic Plants [Visionary Shamanics]
Ultra-psychedelic forest music in the Parvati vein, literally oozing with mind-altering potential.

Glitch – Sacred Geometry [Psybliminal Records/Ritual Records]
Blazing South African psytrance with just a touch of wobble. Quality stuff for the dance floor.

Keamia – The Real World [Elephant Head Records]
This is a lovely full-on morning tune filled with passion and spirit. Keamia has made a lot of progress since he began releasing music on Ektoplazm.

Mantra Flow – Behind The Shadow [Panzar Produktionz]
Bombastic progressive psytrance with huge melodies and loads of energy, almost like full-on pitched down and beefed up a few notches.

AstroPilot – Emptiness [Sun Station Records]
Pulsating and airy, this smooth piece of deeply progressive trance hits all the right notes.

GoaHuman & Sirius – Solar System [Underground Alien Factory Records]
Downtempo Goa trance at its finest; a pleasant surprise from the prolific UAF Records.

Brujo’s Bowl – Organic Structures [Timewave Records]
I have become a huge fan of Brujo’s Bowl since he appeared on the site earlier this year. This is another great psy dub tune from this talented newcomer.

Hinkstep – Medusa [Omnitropic]
Strange, exotic, and disarming psychedelic downtempo from one of the most musically articulate albums of the season.

Interested in hearing more recommendations from the top? Check out previous free music charts from October, August, July, June, the spring and winter of 2011, and the fall and summer of 2010.

Photo: Friday Night Campfire @ Harvest 2011.

©2012 Ektoplazm; click here to view the original post or read what others are saying about it (5 comments so far).

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First, some details about the server. For the last several years Ektoplazm has been hosted by Dreamhost on a virtual private server (VPS) provisioned with the usual LAMP stack (Linux/Apache/MySQL/PHP). The entire site is a custom WordPress installation with caching provided by WP-Super-Cache and XCache. Some performance tuning of the front-end application was accomplished several years ago; since then I’ve mainly been adding content and leaving the underlying code alone. In terms of resource usage, I was chewing through something close to 20 Tb of bandwidth per month and gobbling up nearly 1 Tb of HD space. Ektoplazm has grown to be a bit of a monster as far as quasi-personal web sites go!

Back in late August it seemed as if the problem was simply that the site had become too popular: too many people were attempting to access the site at the same time and the web server was unable to keep up with demand. Technical support staff at my web host suggested several courses of action: switch to a lightweight web server, reduce hotlinking (e.g. direct linking to release packages from pirate blogs) and other abusive and/or illegitimate traffic, and address potential disk I/O bottlenecking.

After some research I decided to switch from Apache to Nginx, a lean web server noted for its high performance under load. With some help from this Nginx configuration for WordPress the site was up and running again without much downtime. It took some wrangling to get Nginx tuned for the specific needs of the site but it seems to be running relatively smoothly now. Switching to Nginx immediately solved the problem I had been having with Apache floundering under demand, so that’s good. I still have some things to test and a few bugs to chase down but progress has certainly been made.

Hotlink protection under Nginx was easy to implement. Serving 403s to users surfing in off of pirate blogs and forums did not sit well with me, however. To address this issue I rigged up a script to (hopefully) redirect users to the appropriate release download page with a bit of RegEx. It won’t help those who right-click and “save as…” but this should catch a good chunk of traffic and bring those users back into the fold. There is also a white list of sites from which direct links will be honoured. If you wish for your domain to be added to this list please contact me by email (particularly if you are a label partner that I have inadvertently blocked). Similarly, if you are having trouble downloading releases from a web-based RSS reader please email me with the domain name of your service of choice.

Dealing with “illegitimate” traffic has turned out to be more of a hassle than I had initially thought. Initially I experimented with Nginx’s Limit Zone and Limit Req modules. Together, these modules limit the number of connections and the frequency of requests from individual IPs, ostensibly to block abusive traffic. Here’s the catch: download managers (e.g. FlashGot) don’t play nice with these modules. It seems as if many people use automated browser plugins and third party applications to pillage web sites these days. Some of these download managers don’t take no for an answer; when their requests are denied they simply try again, over and over. This continues to trigger the limiting threshold, locking client and server in a struggle of wills that can last for hours.

Apart from needlessly tying up resources, this vicious cycle also has the effect of inflating download counts. Since labels and artists rely on these counts I’ve received many, many concerned emails about suspicious activity, most of which can be traced to the showdown between greedy download managers and the limiting modules I was testing out for a few weeks. The counts have since been reset, leading to more confusion, but there was no other way to get everything back to normal. In the process, I altered the script responsible for increasing the download counts, and such abusive traffic should no longer cause a problem. (I am being a bit vague here so that it isn’t obvious how to game the counts in the future.) Monthly and weekly download charts will take some time to regenerate as I had to clear the logs. In any case, the situation is now stable: the download counts are reasonably accurate and should remain that way.

While the Nginx limit modules certainly have some utility they turned out to be impractical for what I had in mind. The entire idea was a bit of a kludge anyhow. What I really wanted to do was to install and configure a firewall like iptables, but I was not able to do so while running on the old VPS. Since then I have upgraded to dedicated hosting and plan to configure a proper firewall to limit bad traffic before it even hits my web server. I am also looking into using CloudFlare; does anyone out there have any experience with it?

Finally, we arrive at the crux of the matter: disk I/O bottlenecking. Hard drives are slow. Think about how long it takes to copy a file from one hard drive to another. Now imagine copying hundreds of files simultaneously. Obviously the transfer rate for individual files will slow down considerably. This is essentially what has been going on in the last few months: demand reached such a high level in August that the hard disk serving files was unable to keep up. Transfer rates have been slow because the web server has had to wait a while for disk access.

Disk I/O bottlenecking can be addressed in a number of ways. Perhaps the most common approach is to reduce disk I/O operations and cache popular files in memory. I did my best to optimize Nginx for reduced disk I/O operations and higher static file throughput but this did not yield results; transfer rates remained slow. Caching won’t help; the files I am serving are too large to be stored in memory. Solid state drives and content distribution networks are prohibitively expensive. Simply mirroring content might work; I’ll be looking into that next. BitTorrent is not an option, and using third party file-sharing services like RapidShare would be terribly impractical and not at all future-proof.

In the end I bit the bullet and upgraded to dedicated hosting at the cost of $209 per month. I no longer share a hard drive with other users. (Access to physical media on a VPS is often shared; this likely contributed to the slowdown.) Of course, pretty much all of the problems I’ve been having could have been addressed by feeding money into the machine but I have been very reluctant to do so given my personal financial situation. Ektoplazm is entirely supported by the community at this point; I did not wish to burden the community with increased monthly expenses without trying out other options. Still, as long as donations remain strong the site will live on. If it reaches a point where there is a shortfall I may have to scale things back somehow, but I am not seriously thinking about that. There is room for cautious optimism; support through the dark months that preceded this post has been strong. I can only hope that it will remain so in the months to come.

I’d like to thank everyone who stepped in to assist me in debugging the issues I’ve been having with the site, from providing simple speed reports to the expert help I received from a few sysadmins and developers. I’m not sure I would have straightened things out without the support of all the free music lovers out there. I still have a few server-related tasks to perform but the worst of it is now in the past.

Next up: a post about the future of the site. Now that I have graduated from university I plan to travel in the next few months. This will impact how frequently I am able to update the site with new music. I am also considering how feasible it might be to transform Ektoplazm into something much greater than it is today. I have a vision… I simply need to decide whether or not to pursue it as I enter into the next chapter of my life.

Photo credit: Maximum 40.

©2012 Ektoplazm; click here to view the original post or read what others are saying about it (7 comments so far).

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Time for another monthly round-up of top tunes released through the Ektoplazm free music portal! Even though we hit a rough spot in September (a subject for another post) there is an incredible amount of quality music flowing through the site these days. I’d like to draw your attention to ten of the best recently posted songs (according to my taste, anyhow). Each and every song listed below can be downloaded for free in CD quality direct from Ektoplazm; just click the track title to be taken to the original release. You can also preview these songs with the streaming audio player to hear them all at once; simply use the little arrows to skip ahead or go back (Flash required):

Gorm – Grumble [Silent Existence]
Filthy Scandinavian forest music with groovy bass lines and heaps of atmosphere.

Cenotes – Smektachius [Forest Freaks]
A pure psychedelic delight from Lithuania. Cenotes is a collaboration between P.Tale and DoHm, another one of my favourite producers.

Re-Horakhty – Spring Tools [Rising Sun Crew]
Full power night music! I’ve been a fan ever since I heard Dungeon Keeper on Under The Moss Vol. 2.

Paraklang – Second Mind Desaster [Independent]
Ripping twilight-style full-on psytrance with catchy riffs and an excellent sample.

Wirrareka & Chors – Horizon [Timeflux Records]
Full-on psychedelic morning trance faintly reminiscent of Mr. Peculiar. Strikes a nice balance between smooth and snarly.

Vishudda – All You Need Is Love [Panzar Produktionz]
Pumping progressive psytrance with an irresistible drive and a fantastic melodic finish.

Faradize – Forgotten Psy [Ektoplazm]
Exotic melodies and classical atmospheres merge in this curious fusion of styles.

Sephira – Destiny [MerKaBa Records]
Deep and mysterious progressive psytrance. The entire album is a gem; don’t miss it!

Astropilot – Yasmin (2011 Rework) [Neogoa]
Luscious tribal downtempo and deep trance. Pure relaxation and entrancement.

SeaMoon – A Deep Breath [Psyderweb Records]
Enchanting downtempo trance from Germany. SeaMoon made a big splash with his debut, A Twisted Downbeat Adventure, and I have been looking forward to hearing new work ever since. This delivers.

Interested in hearing more recommendations from the top? Check out previous free music charts from August, July, June, the spring and winter of 2011, and the fall and summer of 2010.

Photo: Parc Royal.

©2012 Ektoplazm; click here to view the original post or read what others are saying about it (6 comments so far).

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Welcome to another monthly round-up of the best in free music from Ektoplazm! I’m your host, Basilisk, and I am happy to present ten of my top picks for August, 2011. Each and every song listed here can be downloaded for free in CD quality direct from Ektoplazm; just click the track title to be taken to the original release. You can also preview these songs with the streaming audio player to hear them all at once; merely use the little arrows to skip ahead or go back (Flash required):

Paranoiac – Inside [Burning Trip Records]
A pinch of the ol’ ultra-psychedelic, from Argentina no less. Highly atmospheric and involving work from a new talent in the scene.

Sanathana – Exorcism In Zulu Land [Biijah Records]
Extremely haunting night music that sweeps out of the speakers and cloaks you in a shroud of darkness.

Red – Polo Umie [Digital Dream Records]
Premium quality Russian psytrance. A little dark, but also groovy and atmospheric.

Civil Disobedients vs Mark Day – Conceptual Dream [Wonk#Ay Records]
Menacing psytrance with deadly bass lines and an irrepressible drive. The sample is rather timely, I might add.

The 1134 – ReDizzle
Californian twilight music with plenty of meaty melodies and loads of attitude.

Elegy – Black Sun [Panzar Produktionz]
Pumping progressive psytrance with plenty of warmth and majesty. Lovely stuff from Panzar.

Nozem – Merlin’s Beard [Drumlore]
Something fun and cheeky from Drumlore, Ektoplazm’s techno-oriented sublabel.

Brujo’s Bowl – Techno Trousers [Glitchy.Tonic.Records]
Bloody fine tune from Brujo’s Bowl, a new act from mid-Wales that is absolutely burning up the charts these days. Sublime! Hear more on Three Drops To Evolution.

Globular – Seeker [Gliese 581C]
Amazing psychedelic dub in the style of Ott, and every bit as good. Yes, that’s high praise, but it is certainly deserved. Be sure to snap up “C-Happy” on Space Forming Vol. 3 as well.

Easily Embarrassed – Blessed Day On Distorted Shape [EE Records]
The entire album is an extravagant delight but this song is particularly wonderful. Deeply emotion and highly cinematic; this is music to carry you away!

Interested in hearing more recommendations from the top? Check out previous free music charts from July, June, the spring and winter of 2011, and the fall and summer of 2010.

Photo: Arc Study II.

©2012 Ektoplazm; click here to view the original post or read what others are saying about it (12 comments so far).

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OpenMind is a new North American festival, now entering its second year of operation. I missed the inaugural event due to my commitments at Shambhala in 2010 but heard plenty of good things when I returned from my summer travels. Since the Eclipse festival team took the year off OpenMind is looking to be the big trance festival of the season here in eastern Canada. This year, OpenMind is being held for the entire week spanning August 9th to 16th at Whispering Pines Campground, somewhere between Montreal and Ottawa, roughly a five hour drive from Toronto.

So what makes OpenMind different? Although I am mostly basing my impressions on the promotional material I’ve seen, it feels like more of a west coast festival than we are used to finding out east. Whereas Eclipse focused on providing world-class stage design and musical talent, OpenMind appears to be taking more of a “holistic” approach to festival design, opting for two relatively modest stages and more emphasis on workshops, yoga, visionary artwork, film screenings, healing services, and so on. Considerable effort has also been sunk into environmental concerns, as can be seen in their rather extensive sustainability plan. This is not to say that the music won’t be excellent. Au contraire, the the line-up features some excellent acts including international headliners Seb Taylor (performing as Kaya Project and Hibernation as well as playing a special Shakta retro Goa set) and Irina Mikhailova as well as Canadian heroes Ekoplex and Ben Rama, both of whom have excellent releases out on Ektoplazm, and newcomers Psilocybernetics. I am particularly interested in hearing Rikam (Tech Safari/Eclipse Festival) this year as he is scheduled to be playing a classic psytrance set.

I am very happy to be scheduled for two long sets on the main stage at OpenMind. Both time slots are just shy of three hours, a good amount of time to tell a tale, and both span the midnight hour. Midnight is a transitional time when the task of the creatively-minded DJ is to bridge the gap between different moods and lead the journey into the colourful darkness of night. On Saturday I will be playing after Kaya Project and just before a night-time psychedelic DJ. This calls for movement from tribal breakbeat realms into playful organic progressive (what I have been calling Zenonesque recently) and onward through the majestic beauty of proper night-time forest music. The idea here is to turn the psychedelia up to 11 and tune into the ancient consciousness of the whispering pines. Sunday night I’ll be rifling through the archives to share some of the finest old school Goa and classic psytrance. Since its a night-time set you will likely hear music from X-Dream, Cydonia, Tim Schuldt, Metal Spark, Hux Flux, Juno Reactor, and the like, but I never plan my sets so I can’t say anything for sure. Expect something like what can be heard on my Moonshadow studio mix. The rest of Sunday night is going to be a blast: it’s Goa trance (both old and new, I am assuming) all the way into the morning hours. I’ve never actually heard a full night of proper Goa trance at a festival. Can you believe it? Not even back in the 1990s did I experience such a treat. As you can imagine, I am quite excited about the music program at OpenMind this year.

Here’s the pitch, in the words of the organizers:

OpenMind Festival started from a vision; a vision to help consciousness to arise, to help us all to awaken about environment, nature, others, and about ourselves. This seed has grown into the OpenMind Eco-Festival; a gathering of celebration, well-being and peace much involved in sustainability.

The vision of the festival is to burst current paradigms to enter in a new sustainable and free era; as well as to create an important positive impact on the environment, societies and global consciousness. To achieve this, our mission is to create individual and global change by creating spaces to allow the blooming of our children’s hearts and the experience of a new healthy, balanced and sustainable way of living. We put forward an extensive sustainable plan which you can consult on our website.

OpenMind Eco-Festival is not only a visionary gathering of celebration, but also a moment to take care of ourselves; to reconnect with nature, with others and our inner child. The one week event has many different activities to offer: A sunny music stage playing world music, tribal, psychedelic trance, goatrance, psy-tribal, reggae, dub, trance; an ambient music stage playing ethnic music, Indian, psybient, downtempo ambient; an extensive yoga/workshops/conferences stage on a variety of conscious subjects; a healing area where all kind of therapist and healers offer free treatments; An enchanted forest to purify the contemplative mind; a visionary art exhibition; a giant labyrinth; a conscious cinema; sweat lodges; positive ceremonies; circus performances and original animations; a children’s village; a community kitchen; an artisans village; conscious restaurants and much more!

The concept of the festival is to create a moment out of ordinary life, out of time, to be able to experience new things, to discover new tools for enlightenment, to live fully each moment without thinking about anything else. To achieve this, besides all activities offered and quite innovative decorations, all activities (but food) are free on site. Enjoy!

For more information please visit the OpenMind homepage and check out the Facebook event invite.

©2012 Ektoplazm; click here to view the original post or read what others are saying about it (6 comments so far).

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June was yet another busy month behind the scenes here at Ektoplazm. The year is halfway over and I’ve already posted almost as many releases as I did in 2010. Quality has not suffered as the free music gates have opened up… far from it! This month I am pleased to highlight ten more great tracks from a wide variety of artists and labels. Each and every one can be downloaded for free in CD quality here on Ektoplazm (just click the track title to be taken to the original release). You can also preview these songs with the streaming audio player to hear them all at once; merely use the little arrows to skip ahead or go back (Flash required):

Pick – D.M.T. [Atomes Music]
Dark and sinister Zenonesque minimalism from one of my favourite producers. It’ll scratch your brain. What’s not to like?

Neuromodulation – The Others [Uroboros Records]
Deep driving night-time progressive psy from Australia. Haunting stuff!

N.O.M – Step 5 [Helicon Sound System Records]
Haunting, immersive, and evocative dark psychedelic trance with atmospheres that seem to go on forever.

Gu – Critically Busy [Psyculture Festival]
Proper night music in the Parvati vein.

Overdream – Zurna [Sun Station Records]
Powerful full-on psytrance with soaring melodies and an old school touch.

Javi – Something Is Crawling [Neogoa]
The dark side of new school Goa trance. Haunting melodies and mesmerizing atmospheres bring this song alive.

Noble Savage – 7th Seal [Liquid Tune Records]
An unusual blend of forest music and morning trance with old school Goa influences.

Psypheric – No Return [Gliese 581C]
Artful progressive psytrance with a deep tribal drive and plenty of atmosphere.

Electrocado – The Crotch Thruster [Hass Records]
Weird and wobbly Australian progressive psytrance with a glitchy streak. Highly creative genre-bending music to rock the floor.

Brujo’s Bowl – Healing With Sound [Arkona Creation]
One of the big hits of last month: an exotic blend of psychedelic chill and just the right amount of dubstep vibes.

Interested in hearing more recommendations from the top? Check out previous free music charts from June 2011, the spring and winter of 2011, and the fall and summer of 2010.

Photo: Hart Plaza UFO.

©2012 Ektoplazm; click here to view the original post or read what others are saying about it (3 comments so far).

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Summer is just up ahead and I’ve been working hard to keep the free music flowing here at Ektoplazm. Actually, it has been going so well that I feel the need to bump these top ten posts from a seasonal schedule (spring, summer, etc.) to a somewhat more monthly one, starting now. I might not post a new top ten every month but I’d like the option to post more often than every three months. Anyhow, the setup is simple: listed below are ten tracks that have caught my ear in the last little while. Each and every one can be downloaded for free in CD quality here on Ektoplazm (just click the track title to be taken to the original release). You can also preview these songs with the streaming audio player to hear them all at once; merely use the little arrows to skip ahead or go back (Flash required):

Midiskibis – Nightly Passages [Freudian Slip Records]
Uncompromisingly original psychedelic dance music from Finland. The entire album is fantastic, don’t miss it!

Zeitgeist – DNA [Glitchy.Tonic.Records]
Deeply depraved progressive psytrance experiments from the Glitchy.Tonic.Records label boss. Pure sickness.

Pick – Deep Meditation [Uroboros Records]
Gloomy, oppressive Zenonesque psychedelic progressive. A veritable mindfuck!

Lusco Fusco – Amazonia [Olotropo Records]
Extremely atmospheric darkpsy from Brazil. This will take you on a nice trip into the jungle!

Invid Mind – Woogygoo [Alkhimia Records]
Mind-scrambling strangeness from Argentina. This is not easy listening but it is certainly worth it.

Gamaliel – Red Forest [ManiacPsychoPro]
If you seek entrancing high-intensity psychedelic trance, look no further. This monster tune clocks in at 159 BPM with nearly 12 minutes of airtime while remaining extremely hypnotic for the duration.

Paranoiac – Peace From Other Space (Part 1) [Burning Trip Records]
More intriguing psychedelic music from Argentina. Not exactly dark but certainly suited for the night-time hours. Very cool.

Wizack Twizack – Pumpen [Neurotrance Records]
Bubbly, playful, and deeply psychedelic full-on from one of my favourite Swedish acts.

Trinodia – Human History [Underground Alien Factory Records]
One of the most hyped new school Goa trance releases around… and it’s very good indeed! As pointed out in the comments this has a bit of an old school Cosmosis feel to it.

Theobroma – Natural Sounds [Yo Soy Records]
The entire album is a sublime delight but I will admit an inordinate fondness for this epic 16 minute opener full of acoustic elements and progressive psytrance beats.

So there you have it. I went to some effort to highlight a few of the less obvious choices this time around, with special emphasis on the night-time psychedelic sound. I hope you enjoyed it!

Interested in hearing more recommendations from the top? Check out previous top tens from the spring and winter of 2011 and the fall and summer of 2010.

Photo: Sky Flowers IIb.

©2012 Ektoplazm; click here to view the original post or read what others are saying about it (8 comments so far).

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The seasons turn and spring has come to Canada once again. As is my custom, I have annotated a list of thought-provoking articles about the state of the music industry. If you would like to learn a little more about what the future might hold, read on.

Everything popular is wrong: Making it in electronic music, despite democratization is a tremendously good read. A bit myopic, perhaps, but it captures the electronic music industry zeitgeist better than just about anything else I have seen.

Five Reasons For a Musician to Consider the Creative Commons is a good introduction to the subject. In essence: Creative Commons licences are non-exclusive, come in several different flavours, don’t inhibit an artist’s ability to profit from their work, serve as good alternatives to traditional collection societies, and are tailor-made for the digital/networked world we live in.

The Art of Handling Criticism Gracefully should be required reading for any artist working in the public eye. Summary: never ever respond to criticism with anger. It solves nothing and makes you look unprofessional, among other things. When things go really wrong it can even trigger a public backlash against your work.

Is the slowdown of digital sales and the rise of free services a sign of the longer term impact of P2P? Piracy only came to the forefront because the music industry fumbled the transition from physical to digital media. They had no problem cashing in from the switches from vinyl to cassette and compact disc but were nowhere to be found when MP3s became popular. The kicker: “How to convince consumers, that have acquired music for free for several years, to now pay for it is a difficult proposition.” Well, no kidding. I don’t think it can be done, not without a genuinely innovative offering at least.

In case you need any more evidence that the mainstream music industry isn’t getting it, try these stories (which need no additional elaboration): BMI Says A Single Person Listening To His Own Music Via The Cloud Is A Public Performance, It’s Time for the Recording Industry to Stop Blaming “Piracy” and Start Finding A New Way, Record Industry: Limewire Could Owe $75 Trillion, and Has Piracy Ever Killed An Industry? There are signs of hope, however: Death to the Shiny Disc provides an insider’s perspective while advocating for the end of CDs.

The Ethics of Downloading Music You’ve Already Paid For provides no real answers but does raise a good question: under what circumstances is music “piracy” ethically defensible? Similarly, A Marketplace for Used Digital Music? and Re-ReDigi: More Details Emerge About the Used Digital Music Marketplace examines ReDigi, a used digital music marketplace that I would have assumed to be a hoax had I stumbled upon it myself.

Why lossless audio? Or why independent labels & artists shouldn’t carry on the tricks of the majors’ trade provides a good overview of the argument for insisting on CD quality. Never accept any less.

SoundCloud Raining on Its Own Parade is about the conflict between DJ culture and the majors. Apparently there has been a bit of a backlash against the popular social music service since it began removing mixes for containing content released under copyright.

On the electronic dance music tip, Beatport’s Matt Adell discusses user concerns and In the hot seat: Beatport CEO Jonas Tempel (from 2009) provides some insight into what sort of ideas are flowing behind the scenes of the world’s most successful electronic music download shop. The next (non-Flash!) version of Beatport is already in beta so some of this information is likely to be outdated.

Terrifying tower of electronic tones is a great little article about Simon Posford and the “Shpongletron”. Nothing deep, but you should be entertained. Follow that with Case Study: How Shpongle Went From Yelling At Fans To Embracing Fans, a somewhat surprising example of a mainstream music industry blog taking notice of an artist from our slice of the underground. The analysis is somewhat flawed (Simon Posford and his label are not exactly one and the same thing) but it is still interesting, as are the comments.

I usually post a lot of interesting content from Music Think Tank but the quality of their articles has gone downhill since the Hypebot takeover. Now it is little more than a wretched hive of social marketing fluff with formulaic titles like “X Ways To X” or “X Reasons Why You Need To X”. Some people may continue to find their content useful, if only as an introduction to the Music 2.0 dogma, but I am tired of writing about it. I did, however, gain some amusement reading an article that described music fans as “transparency-seeking, interactivity-craving, empowerment-hungry monsters”!

Like this post? Feel free to suggest articles for me to include in future editions of the new music digest.

Previous editions: winter 2011, fall 2010 and summer 2010.

Photo: Electric Badlands.

©2012 Ektoplazm; click here to view the original post or read what others are saying about it (1 comment so far).

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